Wild Animals Prohibited
Page 18
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Ei Amader Shiki Lebu Ningrani, 1989
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
V. Ramaswamy
The first collection of Subimal Misra's stories in English translation, The Golden Gandhi Statue from America, was published in 2010. The response to this, by reviewers as well as readers I was in touch with, has been positive. That has been encouraging.
This collection grew out of work begun during the Sangam House writing residency, in early 2011. That was followed by considerable study, thinking, consultation, re-thinking, selection and re-selection. I was aware that I carried a serious responsibility, of presenting and representing Misra's writing, and so I was alive to the importance of making a meaningful and substantive selection. A manuscript consisting of twenty-two stories, written by Misra over the period 1972–98, was completed and submitted in 2012. But I revised the collection in late 2013, limiting it to stories written during the 1970s and 1980s. I included, for instance, 'Calcutta Dateline', which I had translated during the Ledig House writing residency earlier in the year, as well as 'Come, See India', both of which are among Misra's own favourites.
The first book was undertaken without much thinking. But it was while working on the present volume that I really began to enter the depths of Subimal Misra's writing. In 2006, shortly after I began translating Misra, my aunt Revathy had shared with me an essay by Michael Hofmann, the translator of the Austrian writer, Joseph Roth. That had planted seeds in my mind towards dedicating myself to a project of translating Misra. It was in the course of working on this volume and observing my own growth as a translator of Misra's writing, as well as zest in the work, that I implicitly decided to devote myself seriously to a long-term, multi-volume project of translating a fair representation of his short fiction.
The present collection is very different. The first volume was like a quick introduction to Misra's early short fiction, taking some of his more accessible and translatable stories. In his preface to the book, Misra used the metaphor of a staircase, to refer to readers climbing it to approach his subsequent work. This volume represents the next level of Misra's writing. It breaks new ground. It demands much more of the reader, it is more challenging.
Underlying the selection was my own urge to understand Misra's body of work, to learn about and find significant stories, and know their significance, even as I was translating. Hence my role has been akin to that of a – barefoot – scholar, sociologist or anthropologist, editor, compiler and literary craftsman, besides being the translator. I felt rigour in selection was vitally important, I could not afford to be random or arbitrary in my choice of stories. I have tried to be as fastidious as possible. Growth is essential and vital for me, to be able to satisfactorily represent Misra.
Nilotpal Roy, a literature scholar, teacher and writer has put together a list of eleven stories of Subimal Misra, arranged in a specific sequence, which he considers his best stories. According to him, this selection would give an idea about the kind of writer Misra is. He told me, 'They show experimentation in narrative technique and departure from narrative, defying all conventions. There is also a thematic variation across these stories. They carry to fullest expression the various significances or characteristic aspects of Misra's work. These stories are also extremely challenging to transcreate in another language.' Roy has also prepared another list of twenty-four Misra stories for a sequel volume to Thirty-six Years' Scuffles(which brings together fifty-five of Misra's stories from across thirty-six years of his literary life). For my selection, I have benefited immensely from Roy's lists.
While the stories in the first collection were taken from Anti-Stories Collectionand Thirty-six Years' Scuffles, the stories in the present collection have been taken from these books as well as Babbiand Anti-Novels Collection.
Misra has told me that since he departs from the narrative form, the emphasis is on language. My eagerness and enthusiasm had to repeatedly contend with the impossibility and futility of meaningfully translating various significant stories. Hence, with dismay, several had to be left out, for not being amenable to translation. For instance, I had actually worked a lot on 'Blue Phosphorus' (1977), an important and thought-provoking story. Discussing this, Misra told me that the translation should not be logical, but dreamy, like Lorca and Borges. He wanted indirect words, not direct ones. He wanted me to ingest Pablo Neruda and Paul Eluard. But finally, on his advice, the story was dropped. Nevertheless, I did include, say, 'How a Horse…' and '… Who's Responsible?', both of which are also very much about language.
But I must admit that it is very frustrating and dismaying that one simply cannot really translate dialects or accents, or voices / language forms. The reader of the English translation – unknowingly – entirely misses so much more that the original Bengali has. I hope this eventually works as a creative challenge for the translator.
In Bengali, a book is called boi, and a film, which is called chhobi, or picture, is also often referred to as boi, because films used to be based on popular or famous novels or books. Subimal Misra, however, calls his stories films, or chhobi. The film aspect, that is to say the language of cinema, of Eisenstein and Godard, for instance, and the attempt to render a film effect, is very evident. In 36 Years' Scuffles, Misra writes: '… I make collages. I cut. The way in which the camera treats a situated object. The object is already situated, the camera draws it out. From where it is situated. It gives it distinction. It creates. I too prepare writing. I do it in the manner of holding a camera. I cut from the writing. I create. Something new from what existed. A new kind of creation. A new presentation. A new point of view. A new measure. …' At another level, to my mind Misra also anticipates Pedro Almodóvar.
Here I might mention that just like successive sentences or paragraphs by Misra, bearing visual quality, form a montage, Misra readers know that he also plays with text and font in the pages of his book. He forcibly enters the reading process too, with an actual visual intervention involving text, font size, arrangement, layout and so on. A recent chance encounter with Anna Lena von Helldorff, a graphic designer from Leipzig, lead to my mentioning this aspect of Misra's writing to her. She was very interested. Nilanjan Bhattacharya, documentary film-maker and Misra buff, has also been interested in this aspect. I am excited about this because I urged Anna and Nilanjan to initiate some kind of project which looks at this visual intervention, and that looks like happening.
A number of themes appear in this collection. A significant one is the Naxalite uprising. 'Meat was Bartered', '36 Feet Towards Revolution', 'From the Morgue on Bhawani Dutta Lane', 'Come, See India', and 'The Road to the Mill Jetty', refer to events of 1970–71. Several stories in The Golden Gandhi Statue from Americahad also referred to Naxalism. Misra told me that some of his stories were also of a Naxalite bent or worldview.
I was ten or eleven years old in 1970–71, when Kolkata lived through those turbulent times. Although I was somewhat aware of what was happening around me, I was too young to understand anything. I began educating myself in the early 1980s, and thus began to know more, and understand something of the Naxalite uprising and movement. I entered social action in Kolkata in the mid-1980s, and became acquainted and associated with several former Naxalites in this work, who were active in the public domain after their release from prison in 1977. While they spoke to me about many things, I do not recall their having said very much about their own Naxalite experience, or about that time. I began translating Subimal Misra in 2005. Hence, out of my own interest, as well as to aid my translation work, I was eager to know more about the events of this time. I had read books and articles giving political accounts and analyses of the Naxalite movement, and seen some films as well. But I wanted to know the nitty-gritty, of what it was like to live through that time. The slogans used in rallies and meetings, the writing on the walls, the names of places where murders and mass murders took place, and so on, all of which occupied and formed the vocabulary and consciousness of think
ing folk then. I came upon Debashis Bhattacharya's Shottorer Dinguliat the Convention of Marginal People organized by Nagarik Mancha, in April 2011, in Subodh Mullick Square, Kolkata. It was among the books on sale in one of the bookstalls near the entrance. I flicked through the book, and bought it at once. Skimming through parts of the book in the following months, I thought it merited translation. The author, a journalist, was a former Naxalite activist, and the book brings together a series of articles he wrote about his experience. I saw it as an informative document about a significant period in the life of Kolkata and West Bengal, especially in a time when public memory is fading. Reading and then translating Shottorer Dinguli (under a Sarai fellowship), I was better able to understand allusions in Subimal Misra's stories. My translation is titled Those Days. It is almost like a companion volume to Misra's stories.